AUSTIN — The decision by Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds to step down answered one key question while several others remain.

Sources confirmed that the 76-year-old Dodds, who transformed Texas into one of the most successful and the richest athletic department in the country, will move to a part-time consulting role in August. His contract runs through August 2015 and includes a $1 million annuity.

The time lag between Tuesday’s announcement and the Dodds’ retirement date is designed to allow Dodds to fix the problems within the athletic department and give school president Bill Powers adequate time to find a successor, a source said. A hire could come before August, the source said.

Will Texas need nearly a full year to find an athletic director? And with football coach Mack Brown under fire from fans and even Texas icon Earl Campbell, what happens if the Longhorns struggle down the stretch? Will Dodds, Powers or the incoming AD have the final say on hires?

Last week at an ADs meeting in Grapevine, Dodds said he would be willing to make a hard call on underperforming coaches regardless of the circumstances.

“I’ll guarantee you and anybody else that wants to listen that the right decisions will be made at the right time, regardless of who’s there or not there,” Dodds said. “That comes first. What I’m doing or not doing, that doesn’t count. When it comes time to make decisions, they’ll be made.”

Last month, he strongly denied an Orangebloods.com report that he would step aside by December.

“My goal would be to leave things in good shape,” Dodds said. “We need to win some football games. I’m responsible for that.”

Dodds has faced pressurized situations before — just not lately.

When he fired popular basketball coach Abe Lemons in 1982, Lemons said he wanted a glass-bottomed car to see Dodds’ face as he ran over him leaving Austin. Messy splits with baseball coach Cliff Gustafson and men’s basketball coach Tom Penders followed. Neither Fred Akers nor David McWilliams nor John Mackovic restored the football program to its success under Darrell Royal.

Things turned around to a golden age of Texas sports after that with the hire of Brown, men’s basketball coach Rick Barnes and baseball coach Augie Garrido. The Longhorns won the BCS national title in 2005 and won the College World Series in 2002 and ’05. Barnes put Texas on the national map with recruits T.J. Ford and Kevin Durant while taking Texas to 14 straight NCAA appearances.

In an interview in 2010, Brown praised Dodds for his support:

“He told me, ‘I’ll give you what you need to hire coaches. I’ll give you what you need to win. But I want the experience of the kids to be good. And if you cheat, you’re fired. And if you don’t fill the stands, I can’t pay for all the other sports.’”

Texas’ athletic budget has gone from $4.238 million when Dodds arrived from Kansas State in 1981 to a nation-leading $163.3 million in revenue with expenditures of $138.3 million. An expansion of Royal-Memorial Stadium is among the many facility upgrades.

Dodds was credited with helping broker the Big Eight-Southwest Conference merger to form the Big 12.

UT’s decision to spurn an offer by the Pac-12 preserved the Big 12.

Since Texas played for the BCS national title in January 2010, the Longhorns have turned into a national piñata.

Football is 24-18 since the start of the 2010 season with three consecutive losses to Oklahoma. Men’s basketball missed the NCAA Tournament and watched its top four scorers depart, all with remaining eligibility. Baseball failed to qualify for the Big 12 postseason tournament. The Longhorn Network, a triumph for Dodds and the school with a 20-year, $300 million contract with ESPN, has struggled for distribution and viewership and became a lightning rod during realignment, especially for Texas A&M.

Still, Dodds will almost certainly be remembered more for everything that went right.

“Coaching at Texas is a hard job,” Dodds said in a 2006 interview. “If you hire someone to be the coach at Texas, they can’t be rigid. They have to come in and listen and learn. That’s what I had to do.”